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Microsoft Thinking Back to School

Techstination feature for Thursday, June 30, 2005

Summer vacation has just begun, but Microsoft is thinking back to school. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. It's a new software package designed for middle school and high school kids…Microsoft Student 2006. Senior product manager Karla Tharin says the package provides help in a variety of subjects from history and English…to science and math…

"A lot of kids are working with graphing calculators and we actually have the very first graphic calculator software available. And what it allows you to do is take the 2D or two dimensional graphs that you've been building out within these math classes and really being able to build it out in 3D four color graphs and being able to really experience the output of the math calculations that you're putting together to fully understand them in full color"

The software simplifies the process of creating PowerPoint presentations, includes online math homework help and it will also help kids filter through resources on the Internet…

"We're going to provide a new feature called Web Companion that actually provides trusted content alongside your search results. So you don't have to worry about is this a trusted resource or not and you can go right to a trusted source of information. And that's all built out of Encarta Encyclopedia, which is a part of Microsoft Student 2006."

The software arrives in stores in July for about a hundred dollars. If you search online, you can find it for as much as 20 dollars less. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.